


If You Say the Word, I Could Stay with You

by Black_Betty



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Based on a Tumblr Post, Honeymoon, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Mountains of fluff, with powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-08
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2017-12-28 20:02:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/995977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Black_Betty/pseuds/Black_Betty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik has a well thought out plan of attack when it comes to marriage proposals. </p><p>Of course, the best-laid plans...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is based on this gorgeous gifset from tumblr:
> 
> http://sasheenka.tumblr.com/post/63390291553
> 
> and from a prompt Ikeracity thought up a few nights back. I have no original ideas. You can blame other people for this ridiculousness :D 
> 
> \--including the title, which I stole from The Beatles and their song "When I'm 64."

 

The ring is a brushed white gold. The band is wide and thick, plain in a way that will suit Charles, who could never be plain, but enjoys simple things. It will match well with his sweaters and his collared shirts and his unruly hair, fitting considering he’s going to be wearing it every day for the rest of his life.

Well, at least that’s what Erik hopes.

A little bubble of nervous excitement swells up in his stomach and he takes a moment to breathe, running his thumb over the ring again and again where it is settled comfortably into the dark blue velvet box. Erik had made the ring himself, can still feel how it fits together and the outline of each word on the inside of the band, but it feels strangely dead. Lifeless. He thinks about sliding it onto Charles’ finger and how it will warm with the heat of his body, how Erik will feel the words impressed upon his skin, will be able to track the pump of Charles’ blood through the circle of gold.

He covers his mouth with his hand, aware he’s sitting alone in his car seemingly grinning at nothing. Glancing up he spots Charles through the windshield walking down the steps of his apartment building, his hands in his pockets, smiling as he sees Erik’s car.

Erik snaps the ring box shut, turning quickly and slipping it into the inner pocket of his coat thrown across the backseat. He’s still checking to make sure it’s secure and hidden away when the passenger door opens and Charles slides into the car.

“Hello,” he says as Erik settles back into the front seat and looks at him, and feels his breath catch. Charles doesn’t look any different than he normally does in the too-big coat that Erik hates, striped shirt unbuttoned at the collar, trousers wrinkled after a day spent in his office. But there's something about the ring tucked away in Erik’s jacket, and the enormity of what he’s about to ask Charles, how long he’s been planning this, carefully, meticulously, booking Charles’ favourite restaurant months in advance even when they told him they never filled up on a Tuesday night, it all seems to enhance how completely fucking gorgeous Charles is.

This man, this man who is smiling at him with the ease of years spent together, who looks tired but so happy to be sitting in Erik’s car on a Tuesday night for seemingly no reason at all, whose hair is falling across his forehead in a way that makes him look eighteen instead of twenty seven; this man is going to be Erik’s husband.

Probably.

Hopefully.

He swallows down another bubble of nerves and leans forward, grasps Charles by the back of the neck and kisses him. Charles makes a little noise of surprise, but eagerly kisses him back, hand coming up to clutch at Erik’s collar. Erik isn’t one for public displays, likes to keep Charles to himself and their affection for each other safe behind closed doors. But he can’t help himself tonight.

“Oh…well, hello!” Charles says, breathless and a little dazed when they break apart, and Erik starts the car with a wave of his hand, “what was that for?”

Erik smirks and directs the car into traffic.

***

Charles sitting under the stained glass lampshades of the restaurant is more beautiful than Erik thinks he’s capable of wrapping his mind around. They’ve been here a million times before, but he doesn’t think he’s ever noticed how the deep dark colours of the dining room enhance the pale curve of Charles cheeks and throat even where it is peeking out of his awful striped shirt. He’s rambling on about something work related, his classes, or his students or his lab work, but Erik’s only partially able to pay attention, ensnared as he is in the way candlelight illuminates the hollows of Charles’ face, makes his eyes huge and luminous.

He’s so caught up watching Charles trace senseless patterns on the tablecloth with his fingertips that he doesn’t realize Charles has stopped talking until Charles lifts one of his hands and places it over his own. When he glances up, Charles’ smile is shaded lightly with concern.

“Everything alright?” He asks, “Is it the case?”

Erik fumbles for a moment to cover. The “case” is something he had invented to explain away all the hours he was spending late at the office to make Charles’ ring.

“Well…” he hedges, inwardly cursing when Charles’ face falls and his hand tightens around Erik’s, expecting the worst. “Actually, I think it’s almost closed,” he says slowly, rubbing his thumb across the back of Charles’ hand, “in fact…I have a feeling…well, I’m hopeful that it will end well.”

He can’t help but smile as Charles visibly brightens, and shakes Erik’s hand in excitement,

“So that’s why you wanted fancy dinner on a _Tuesday_!” he says, and leans back, raises his free hand to flag down the waiter.

“Could we trouble you for a bottle of Champagne?” he asks her when she hurries over. He glances back at Erik and grins like they’re sharing a secret. “Looks like we’ve got something to celebrate.”

The girl says something before she runs off, but Erik doesn’t hear it, can only focus on Charles smiling at him from across the table, genuinely happy and excited for him, for his success. The words of the carefully prepared speech are welling inside his chest, and he can almost taste them on his tongue. This is it. The moment couldn’t be more perfect.

“Charles,” he starts, but stops when Charles winces and rubs at his temple.

“Sorry love,” he says, “What was that?” Erik opens his mouth to start again, but stops when Charles hisses through his teeth and presses his palm over his forehead, letting go of Erik’s hand to turn in his seat and look across the restaurant.

Erik follows his gaze to a group of middle-aged men sitting in the far corner of the room. They’re all dressed in the similar bland uniform of the middle class bureaucrat, crisp white button up shirts and loosened ties, a collection of beer bottles on the table in between them.

Charles stands suddenly, startling Erik so badly that he automatically gets to his feet as well, his legs knocking against the table and rattling the silverware.

“There’s going to be a fight,” Charles murmurs, his voice low and serious, and Erik can see it now; the way the men are leaning in close to each other, nearly out of their seats, faces red as blood and tensions rise along with the sound of their voices.

Charles is across the dining room before Erik can stop him or tell him that it’s none of his business. He scrambles around the table after him, arrives at the other side of the restaurant just in time to hear one of the men shout “FUCK OFF” over Charles’ steady voice pleading with them to “calm down, please gentlemen.”

The men are all talking at once and getting to their feet, tipping the table back and forth towards one another, and Erik is about to step in and strangle them all with the loose change in their pockets when abruptly things escalate.

It happens so quickly that Erik can barely follow it. One of them, a hulking blonde man, picks up his pint glass and tosses his drink across the table in another man’s face. That man howls in outrage, lunges around the table and aims a heavy punch at the Blondie's face, weighted down with the meat of his fat fingers and the silver class ring on his pinky finger. At the same moment the waitress comes through the door next to the table carrying a bottle of champagne. The punch is sloppy and while the intended target manages to dodge it, the waitress is less lucky.

Charles, channeling response time with his telepathy no doubt, grabs her by the shoulders and turns her out of the way. And takes the full brunt of the punch across his face.

The girl swears and drops the bottle of champagne, which shatters and sprays everywhere on the tile floor, but all Erik can hear is the pained sound Charles makes as he stumbles back, one hand flying to his face, the other bracing himself against the wall.

For a moment, nobody moves. Charles pushes himself off the wall and rubs at his face, rotates his jaw to make sure nothing is broken. When he takes his hand away, his lip is split, and a rivulet of blood is running over his chin, staining his teeth red.

Erik can’t think straight, can’t move. His body is frozen and all he can see is that line of blood as it blots out his vision. Charles dabs at the blood with his fingers and then looks at them, runs his tongue across his lip and grimaces, looks at the man who hit him.

“Right,” he says, and punches the man square in the face. The man falls back against the table in a crash, and the others, momentarily stunned, forget their annoyance with each other and roar in outrage, coming at Charles all at once.

Erik always forgets Charles was a footballer when he was doing in first PHd in London, and a bit of a brawler. He remembers now as he watches him leap into the fray grabbing one man around the neck and kicking another one in the stomach when he lunges at him.

That’s the one Erik hauls back by the metal of his belt and knocks out with a quick punch, clean and direct and vibrating through his arm in a familiar way. When another man comes at him foolishly with a steak knife from the table, Erik melts it in his hand and waves him off, lifting him with the metal of his suspenders and the keys in his pocket and throwing him against the far wall where he rebounds off the wood paneling and slides into the potted plant decorating the corner.

When he turns back to Charles, he finds him wrestling the last man standing down to the floor and when he gets him there, the man flailing and reaching behind him, looking for a hold, Charles shouts, “SLEEP” and the man falls into unconsciousness.

Charles sits back on his haunches, breathing hard, pushing his hair back off his face. He looks at Erik, who asks, “why didn’t you do that in the first place?” and Charles only grins at him, his teeth still bloodstained, his eyes wild, and Erik think if they don’t get out of here soon he’s going to fuck Charles on the broken pieces of the table.

“What the hell is going on here!?” someone shouts from across the room, and the waitress grabs Charles by the arm and hauls him to his feet, hisses, “You better go!” as she shoves them in the direction of the glass doors that lead out to the stone patio and the street.

Charles takes off running and Erik follows him out the door, vaulting over the patio railing and racing down the street, dodging pedestrians and piles of garbage and a dog tied up to a bicycle rack that barks at them and nips at Erik’s heels.

Finally they burst through the trees and into the park, Charles collapsing onto a wooden bench and panting for breath, flopping his head down on Erik’s shoulder when he falls down next to him, his chest heaving for air.

As his heart gradually slows down to a regular pace, beating as opposed to exploding out of his chest, Charles tips his head back to look at him.

They stare at each other for a moment and then suddenly burst into laughter. The pigeons pecking at the footpath next to them startle into flight as they laugh and laugh, Charles burrowing his face into Erik’s chest, Erik tangling a hand into his hair, clutching onto him as their laughter echoes through the trees with the fading sunlight.

Slowly the laughter trails off and as they gasp for air again, Charles leans back to grin up at him and reaches out to take Erik’s face between his hands.

“You saved my arse back there, Mr. Lehnsherr,” and Erik shakes his head, mirrors his grin and says,

“You know I always have your back, you crazy person.” Charles strokes his thumbs along Erik’s cheeks and leans forward to press their smiles together in a gentle kiss. It’s sweet, but it’s not enough, not nearly enough and Erik hauls him close and kisses him harder, gripping him around the waist, and pressing their bodies together.

When he licks at Charles’ lip, Charles flinches and makes a pained sound and Erik curses into the kiss and pulls back.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, hand coming up to gently probe at Charles’ split lip.

“It’s fine,” Charles says around his fingers, but he winces when Erik touches the underside of his cheekbone which is swollen and looks purple even in the encroaching shadow of nightfall.

“It’s not fine,” he scolds, and reaches into his coat pocket for some spare Kleenex, or the silk pocket square he had spent ages perfecting before going to pick Charles up hours ago.

But when he touches his chest, he realizes he’s not wearing his jacket.

He remembers now he had taken it off in the restaurant, had insisted on draping it over the back of his chair even when the waitress had offered to hang it up for him.

Had needed to keep it close because the ring was hidden in the inside pocket.

Realizes with a sick drop of his stomach that he had left his jacket behind when they ran out the back door.

He stands up and takes one step in the direction of the restaurant, stops frozen, body flooding with nervous tension. Shit. SHIT. What the fuck has he done?

“Erik…?” Charles says, confused, one hand reaching out to brush against his arm.

“I have to go back to the restaurant,” Erik says, stalking off in short, clipped strides. Charles jumps to his feet and rushes around him, stopping him with two hands planted firmly on his chest.

“What? Why?”

“I left my coat,” he says and looks down at Charles who is only in his thin button up, the skin at the base of his throat pebbled with goosebumps, “ _You_ left your coat. I’m going to go back and get them.”

He tries to get around Charles, but he locks his elbows and keeps Erik in place,

“It’s fine!” he says, rubbing a soothing circle with his palm on Erik’s chest, “we can get them later. I just want to go home.”

Erik grabs his wrist, and pulls his hand off his chest, kisses his palm when Charles looks surprised and a little hurt.

“I have to get it now,” he insists, and side steps Charles quickly, hurrying down the path back to the street.

“But _why_?” Charles shouts, and he sounds so baffled that Erik turns to look at him, catches his expression pool of light from the short lamp posts dotting the pathway. He looks so confused and a little wounded, and his face is purpling on one side where his mouth is still smeared with blood.

Christ. How did this night get so fucked up?

“I HAVE to,” he shouts back, “Please Charles.” Charles stands for a long moment, staring at him as last bit of sunlight disappears from the sky.

“Alright,” he says quietly, and walks over to him, searching his face. Erik keeps his mental shields high, even though Charles never looks when his shields are in place, but there is no tell tale sign of Charles’ telepathy, no mental nudge or gentle tap. He only takes Erik’s hand and tugs on it, starts to walk back toward the restaurant.

***

Of course it’s closed when they get there.

Erik pounds on the glass of the front door, but nobody answers.

“Let’s just go,” Charles says wearily, and when Erik glances at him over his shoulder, he’s sitting in the passenger seat of the car with the door open, his feet dangling outside on the pavement, his head resting back against the seat. There’s a crease between his eyes that exposes the headache he’s trying to hide, and his eyes are weighted down and exhausted.

Erik, utterly defeated, walks over to him and kneels at his feet, rests his forehead against his knee.

“Hey,” Charles says, one hand sneaking into his hair and petting him soothingly, “it’s fine—we can come back tomorrow and get it.”

Erik feels exhausted. He clings to the loose material of Charles’ trousers behind his calf and murmurs,

“You’re lovely. I don’t deserve you.” The petting pauses for a moment, and then gets a little firmer, Charles digging into the knots at the base of his skull with his fingertips.

“That’s ridiculous,” he says, “you’re being ridiculous.” Erik feels ridiculous, kneeling on a public street like this, but he feels so defeated, and Charles has always been the ultimate source of comfort. They sit there for a long, lingering moment, and Erik feels the night closing in around them, dark and quiet. He doesn't want to get up just yet. 

“Will you marry me?”

For a second he thinks that _he_ said it. That he wanted it so badly he just let it slip.

But the hand in his hair is frozen and when he lifts his head, it drops away. Charles is staring at him, eyes wide, mouth slightly parted in shock. He breathes in sharply, his breath stuttering in his chest,

“Erik, I—“

“Did you just ask me to _marry_ you?” Erik asks, and the exhaustion, the disappointment is draining away, replaced by something that feels like pure energy, like brilliant white light.

Charles groans and turns his body into the car seat, hides his blushing face in his hands,

“…No?”

Erik is distantly aware of the garbage cans lining the street crumpling in on themselves, of the alarm in the car next to them triggering and wailing into quiet of the street. Next to them the tall streetlight groans and sways in their direction and faintly, he can feel the familiar signature of precious metal calling out to him as he pulls it in his direction with a great heave.

“Erik, I’m sorry,” Charles is saying frantically, grasping onto his shoulders, trying to calm him down, “I didn’t mean to spring it on you like that, I had it all planned for next weekend when we go to the cottage, and—“

“Charles,” Erik interrupts just as the ring box comes crashing through the glass of the front door of the restaurant, setting off the alarm. He catches it in one palm without looking as Charles shouts in surprise, as the car alarm and the restaurant alarm screech over each other in a horrible, rising crescendo.

He grabs Charles hands where they are still fluttering anxiously around his shoulders, and says, “Charles,” again, just as he reaches out and tugs at wires, whispers _shhhhh_ and shuts everything off. The street is silent again, and all Erik can hear is the excited beating of his own heart.

“I love you, even when you're insane and beating people up and proposing to me out of the blue. Especially then. When I was being crazy in the park, you didn't even ask why I wanted to come back here, you just came with me. I love you for that. I love you, period. I had a whole speech prepared, but obviously we’re dispensing with formality,” Charles scoffs, and rolls his eyes, but his face is slowly brightening with realization like the coming dawn, and he’s smiling that unbearably beautiful smile he saves for when he’s truly happy.  “Of course I will marry you,” Erik continues, and Charles chokes as though he’s torn between laughing and crying,

“The question is,” and he lets go of Charles to open the ring box, carefully watching the way Charles’ expression breaks completely open, utterly full of joy, thinks about the words engraved by his own hand on the inside of the band: _Not Alone._  

 

“Will _you_ marry _me_?”

 


	2. Mine Forevermore

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a bit of happily ever after...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus Honeymoon chapter! Written for this prompt on tumblr: honeymoon!cherik - two nerds in love drinking shitty fruity drinks by the pool, having sex every two hours, and just being ridiculous

It was meant to be a joke, replacing all of Charles’ regular swim trunks with tiny shorts, but as Erik watches Charles parade around the lido deck in a scrap of navy blue cloth masquerading as a bathing suit, Erik thinks the joke is on him.

It solidifies, however, how very, very lucky Erik is to have married Charles Xavier three days earlier in a downtown courthouse as their friends and family looked on and then showered them with rice and silver confetti. How lucky he is now to be south of the equator and watching his husband grab their drinks from the bar, tall ridiculous things teeming with paper umbrellas and pieces of fruit, and carefully make his way back over to where Erik is lounging by the pool.

Charles manages it somehow, despite the collection of ogling women poolside and the obstacle course of patio furniture, and the countless umbrella adorned drinks they had consumed earlier in the morning. He arrives, triumphant, and proudly hands Erik his drink, which Erik ignores in favourite of hauling him down into his lap and kissing the sticky sweetness of alcohol and fruit juice from his mouth.

When he allows Charles a moment to breathe his sunglasses are askew, and Charles is grinning crookedly up at him, his joy and contentment and arousal leaking all over the place like a burst pipe.

“Hello,” he says, breathlessly.

“Hello yourself,” Erik replies, kissing him again. At some point in the next few blissful moments Charles’ drink spills down Erik’s chest and into his lap, and they startle apart at the splash of cold liquid.

“Oh dear,” Charles says, his eyelids heavy as he tracks a trail of grenadine syrup down Erik’s pectoral muscle, his lower lip swollen and red as he slowly drags it through his teeth. “We wouldn’t want to be wasteful, would we?”

He is licking a piece of cherry from Erik’s navel when Erik, sprawled on the lounge chair and nearly out of his mind, looks up to see the hotel manager standing above him.

“Sir,” the man says sternly, his arms crossed against his chest. “I thought we talked about this.”

Charles finishes placing a wet, open-mouthed kiss on Erik’s stomach and sits up, licking his lips languidly.

“Mmmm…no more indecent acts in areas reserved for public use.” He looks around and his eyes widen as he suddenly realizes where he is. “Oops.”

“You’re disturbing the other guests,” the man continues, disappointed and scolding.

“We don’t mind,” calls one of the ladies watching raptly from the other side of the pool. She’s part of a large group of women who are celebrating their 60thbirthdays at the resort, and when Erik looks over she flashes him an unsubtle thumbs up.

The manager’s mouth tightens and he looks prepared to argue, but Erik is still a bit brainless with arousal and not really in the mood for a fight, especially not when Charles is tipsy and waving at their audience with a bright smile, a piece of pineapple from their spilled drink stuck to the smooth muscle of his thigh just next the seam of his impossibly tiny shorts.

“Apologies,” he says quickly, dragging Charles to his feet and across the pool deck, away from prying eyes.

They have a cabana out on a private beach, separate from the main hotel and as they crash through the door and tumble onto the polished hardwood, Erik spares a moment to be grateful for their lack of neighbours.

They’re silly from alcohol and the heat of the sun and Charles is laughing as Erik struggles to peels him out of his maddening bathing suit, the two of them tangled up and bumping elbows and knees. Finally Charles is naked and pressed up against him, and Erik takes a minute to look at him, breathless and flushed and happy before he moves to suck his cock right there on the bedroom floor.

Later, after Charles has returned the favour and they’ve slipped into a light post-coital doze, Erik wakes in the evening twilight wrapped around Charles, the two of them completely bare and uncovered on top of the sheets. The windows are open and the wind from the ocean drifts lazily into the room making Charles shiver and press closer into Erik’s body.

Erik runs a hand over the warm skin of his back and tangles their feet together. In the golden orange of sunset, Charles glows. Despite Erik caking him in sunblock every morning, he still has bursts of dark freckles on his shoulders and arms, and scattered down the bridge of his nose. Erik follows the path of them with one finger and watches as Charles slowly wakes, squinting at him before burrowing his face between Erik’s shoulder and the mattress.

“Ugh,” he groans, “no more drinks with umbrellas in them.”

Erik laughs and runs a hand through his hair.

“But you love drinks with umbrellas in them.”

Charles shakes his head stubbornly.

“No, I hate them. They’re the devil.”

Erik laughs, and then laughs harder when Charles extracts his face from the mattress to pout at him. Erik is compelled to kiss him until the sulk melts into a smile beneath his mouth and then pulls back just far enough to murmur,

“You know what will make you feel better?”

Charles kisses him again, eyes fluttering shut, hands sliding around Erik’s waist.

“No, what?”

Erik nips his bottom lip and then swings himself out of bed, races out the door, shouting over his shoulder,

“A swim!”

He catches the astonished look on Charles’ face before he shoots across the sand, hears Charles shout,

“You’re naked you silly git!” before he dives into the shallow waves, the water warm and clear, painted pink and purple as the sun sinks lower along the horizon.

When he surfaces shaking water from his ears, he turns back to the shore line to find Charles standing at the water’s edge, wrapped in a sheet. The look on his face…Erik can’t extrapolate the many layers of love there, and fond affection and joy, but he knows it as truth and feels the echo of it in his own heart, full enough in that moment to burst in his chest.

He smiles at Charles and holds out a hand, watches as Charles drops the sheet to the sand and strides confidently into the water. When he reaches Erik he slides his arms around his neck and allows Erik to tow them further out into the water until their feet can no longer touch and they’re floating along with the gentle movement of the waves, kissing each other slowly, the salt of the ocean on their lips, the cool metal of Charles’ ring branding the nape of Erik’s neck as Charles rests his hand there and holds on.


End file.
